A team of French adventurers left Paris on Wednesday in a convoy of tiny Citroën electric cars with the goal of driving across Africa to Cape Town.
Known as the La Croisière Verte (The Green Cruise), the 14,000km journey will take the team along the continent’s west coast via Senegal, Congo, Angola and Namibia into South Africa, with arrival in Cape Town scheduled for mid-January 2025.
The car used for the trip is a Citroën Ami, a two-door battery-electric quadricycle launched in 2020. The expedition’s four Amis are modified with bigger wheels and an extended battery range of 250km, from the normal 70km. The cars will carry all the expedition gear including spare parts, tools and solar panels.
The official departure will take place on October 28 in Morocco, where the Ami is manufactured, 100 years to the day after the departure of André Citroën's Black Cruise in which the French brand’s founder drove eight months across Africa.
The team leader of this year’s expedition, entrepreneur and former Dakar Rally racer Éric Vigouroux, is celebrating the centenary of the original adventure with electric cars powered by renewable energy.
He is accompanied by his former co-driver Alexandre Winocq, rally raid expert Antonia de Roissard, and Maarten van Pel who crossed Africa in an electric Skoda SUV in 2023. They will be filmed by director Claudio von Planta, riding an electric motorcycle.
The team aims to cover about 200km per day, recharging from solar photovoltaic panels carried by the vehicles and from hydroelectricity and wind.
“I am confident one day we will all be able to travel in zero-emission vehicles. It's by constantly pushing new technologies to their limits and setting ourselves new challenges that we'll get there,” Vigouroux said.
“We're looking forward to meet people across France and the 15 African countries where we will be welcomed by many people involved in electric mobility, sustainable energy and environmental protection.”
The Citroën Ami is an interesting base, light, therefore not greedy in electricity, with a tubular chassis easy to modify, he added.
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